China Bashing Continues, Mirrors Missing In the West

Is China A Threat?

I have been listening to podcast almost everyday for six to seven years, much of it on Bloomberg since they put out a huge volume. Like others who are interested in world affairs i follow blogs and read news articles on major site. Over the years this trumpet keeps sounding "China is a threat in...." There have been many different fill in the blank topics to be sure and just about all are hypocritical  from a geopolitical stand point. Now I will agree that if you want to create fear, anger, and embed a stereotype of the Chinese government than it serves this purpose very well. Though I believe it is a horrible message to send to the average American let alone the Chinese whom we work with on many levels and need to cooperate with to bring stability in the world.

When talking about the military I understand the angst but we still spend more than double the percentage of our GDP than they do 4.4% to 2%. In all these years of talk of the threat of China they haven't waged war on anyone, but yet we have. What leads us to believe they will? Is the mere fact that they are spending more mean they will? Than we too are guilty of that in spades, and have more of a history of entering into wars with little justification other than it's in our national interest to do so. The better answer, and one we espouse ourselves is self defense. Not just from invaders coming in but also from a self reliance standpoint. Each country would like to maintain a certain level of their military needs being provided by domestic suppliers. To use a crazy example, if we relied on the North Korean's for one of most used missiles what would happen when we entered a war they didn't agree with? They could simply cut us off, that is the primary driving factor of the Chinese build up of their defense infrastructure. As a developing economy they have relied on the technology and manufacturing of others to provide for their defense. Many countries operate in this way and we are the exact same.

In the economic sphere China has become a frequent topic of discussion. Almost never does a day go by that at least one guest is brought on to discuss the threat of china in A,B, or C. realm. I have been hearing this for years. It seems to me that if a country does to well we want to bash them, as if we are the royalty of old deemed by god to be the leader of everything. A funny criticism I heard today on Bloomberg to a guest was that the government was in everything and it doesn't seem like there is a level playing field. Are you kidding me? What government in the world interferes more than the US? Answer is none. The sheer size and position we have dictates that we can more than anyone, and by god we do. The industries the government and the federal reserve subsidize is too numerous to mention. It is done directly and indirectly. They use influence and law to shape a large percentage of the economy as well. How can that be a negative against China but not ourselves? A large portion of our economic recovery is based simply on the federal reserve money printing, but if Chinese central bank does the same it somehow interferes with world commerce?

I remember a number of years ago during the Clinton era for a period of time a much used term to describe how we could maintain our influence was to be "An Honest Broker". To have our actions align with our talk. That in order to have some standing in negotiations you should be speaking on principles you actually follow to be credible. It seems to me we have abandoned that principle and taken the stance do as I say not as I do. The funny thing is in some cases I agree with the talking points. The Chinese should be doing some of the things we urge them to do, they would be better off for it. But then again so should we. We may have shipped off the production of mirrors to China but no one in the government seems to see the flaws that would be glaring back at them if they did.